STRANGE RELATIONS

Remarkable entertaining deft moving refreshing Daily Telegraph A richly rewarding account of a resonant cultural moment Guardian Textured literary portraits of the masculine mind and body Raymond Antrobus author of The Perseverance In October 1960 James Baldwin and John Cheever spoke on a panel together at San Francisco State College The troubled state of American society was under discussion which Baldwin incisively diagnosed as a failure of the masculine sensibility Strange Relations explores this crisis in mid century masculinity and the lives and works of four bisexual writers who fought to express and embody alternate possibilities Building on Walt Whitman s philosophy of the love between men Ralf Webb considers the ways in which Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers as well as Cheever and Baldwin resisted in their art as well as in their relationships the damaging expectations of contemporary gender and sexuality With a curious intelligent and sensitive gaze Ralf Webb sheds new light on each writer Together these artists offer a powerful and moving argument for a transformative new masculinity grounded in fluidity love and intimacy Webb s writing is of a quality rarely seen and his book returns you to the world